A few weeks back, I went out on my usual hunt for vintage treasures. I enjoy a mooch around old second-hand shops - the soft clatter of porcelain awaiting a new destiny, chipped mugs grinning from sagging shelves, figurines standing there frozen in cheerful oblivion, and the air that carries the familiar hush of untold stories.
I hadn't set out to find anything remarkable that day, but, hidden away in a once-damp box, with layers of dust settling over it, I saw it - a tea set, incomplete but enchanting.
Blue and yellow flowers traced fragile patterns across the porcelain, and each piece was edged in blue, as if the sky had once touched them and never quite let go.
Crazing ran like ghostly veins through the porcelain, fine and delicate, a map of time itself.
I imagined hands once cradling the creamer, pouring ribbons of milk into an afternoon cup.
A sugar bowl that had sweetened conversations now rested in silence, waiting.
Though imperfect, the set had spoken, and I had listened.
I gathered the pieces, carrying them as though they were pieces of a forgotten dream.
Turning each piece over, I read their back-stamp - Produced at the Leighton Pottery, Burslem, Eng. - a mark of craftsmanship from another time.
I thought of their place among the other fading treasures in My Etsy Shop - the worn hardbacks, the forgotten toys, and the tarnished silver. They would sit quietly, waiting for hands that understood the beauty of imperfection, and the poetry of the past.
♥